For 24 years I ran a family business. Director. On paper, everything was fine. Good income, family, career — the kind of life that from the outside looked exactly like it should.
Behind it was a different story. For years I used alcohol, cocaine and gambling to cope — not in a messy, obvious way. The kind of way that's easy to hide. Social at first, then more frequent, then daily. The kind of thing where you can still hold a meeting, still be a husband, still function — but you know something's not right.
That was the problem."
The coping wasn't random. It was a response. To not living in line with what I actually valued. To a career I'd drifted into rather than chosen. To the gap between how life looked and how it felt.
When I finally got honest about it — properly honest, not just "I'll sort it Monday" honest — everything changed. Not overnight. Not easily. But it changed.
I rebuilt my fitness, my structure, my daily habits. Ran multiple marathons, including Manchester 2023 and London 2024. I started waking up and actually wanting to be in my own life again. And I realised that the structure I'd built to pull myself out of it was the same structure that most men around me were desperately missing.
That's why I do this. Not because I've got a formula. Because I've been in the same place most of the men I work with are in now — and I know what it actually takes to make the changes we say we want to happen.
